Harvest Monday Jan 30, pre and post holiday harvest

It's a bit  tricky going on holiday when you have a veggie garden. We've went away camping over the Australian Day weekend.  We found the ideal spot, swam at beautiful quiet beaches, hiked, relaxed, laughed and ate nice food. Lovely.  The weather was quite pleasant where we were, but in Melbourne it was hot  and despite a good water before we went and a token watering by a neighbour when we were away, the garden suffered a little bit and we returned to brown leaved tomatoes and rather wilty cucumbers.   Looking on the positive side though there are still harvests and some things - like the basil - even seem to have liked the heat and put on a growth spurt.

Anyway, onto the harvests. This lot was picked before we went away - cucs, beans (purple king and borlotti), round zucchini, blackjack zucchini, green capsicum, basil and lots of tomatoes (katinka cherry, red beefsteak, Cosimo special, black cherry and husky red).

This are the post-holiday harvest.  Our first red capsicum which might be Franks Red but I'm not sure.  The fruit grow in a different way to the other capsicums - upwards from the base ather than hanging down.  I grew it from seed that I was sent by some kind person but I sowed 4 different varieties and then forgot which ones germinated... Suggestions welcome as to what it might be!  Also in the harvest: a cuc, zucchini and a round zucchini that time forgot.

Here are all the tomatoes that ripened in the heat.  The greeny-yellow one at the top is a KBX. Someone sent me this seed as well.  The plant hasn't done well which is unfortunate because this tomato tastes really very good indeed.  Ah well, I've saved seed and might try it again next year. The other yellow ones are lemon boy and the red ones a mixture of tommy toes, black cherry, periforme and red beefsteaks.  

For more harvests - pop over to Daphne's.

Harvest Monday Jan 23rd and a recipe

Phew! It's hot in Melbourne right now.  34C today and more of the same tomorrow.  Well, at least the eggplants like it; we picked the first couple yesterday.  Also in our (daily) harvests this week were lots of tomatoes, cucumbers, basil, spring onions, zucchini of various varieties, corn, green capsicum and our biggest strawberry haul in one day yet  - almost half a kilo which were eaten before I got to take a picture!   

I used the eggplant to male eggplant parmigiana, but a slightly more healthy version because I baked the eggplant instead of frying and omitted the mozzarella mainly because I didn't have any.   I forgot to take a picture but I can assure you that it was really yummy and it took a lot of willpower not to eat the whole dish between two of us.

Eggplant parmigiana- serves 4

2 large eggplant, sliced into 0.5 cm thick slices
100g breadcrumbs
100g grated parmesan
1-2 beaten eggs (depending on the size)

Tomato sauce
1 onion, finely diced
1/2 kilo ripe tomatoes
handful basil
salt
2 cloves garlic, chopped
olive oil


To make the sauce, fry the onions in a little olive oil until soft.  Then add the tomatoes, garlic and salt and cook on  low heat into a thick sauce. 

Oil 2 baking trays lightly with olive oil.

Mix the breadcrumbs and half the parmesan together and season with a little salt and pepper.  Dip each eggplant slice into the beaten egg and then te breadcrumb/parmesan mix. Arrange the slices on the oiled baking tray and drizzle over some more olive oil on each (just a little bit). Bake the slices for about 20 mins in a 200c oven , turning halfway until golden and crispy.

In a baking dish put a layer of eggplant, then a layer of sauce and sprinkle over some parmesan and a few torn basil leaves.  You could also add some mozzarella.  Repeat with more layers until all the eggplant is used up (I got 2 layers).  Top with some cheese and bake in a 200C over for 30 mins until the cheese is golden. 
 
 

Harvest Monday Jan 16

I've been super-slack at posting harvests recently so here are some from the past week or so...

Japanese cuc, strawberries, rhubarb, tomatoes (from top - Cosimo special, katinka cherry, black cherry)



Corn, basil, button squash, blackjack zucchini and amarath

Button squash, round zucchini (these are the most prolific this year), gem squash, lemon cucumbers, Tomatoes (Tommy toe, Cherokee purple and an unknown red beefsteak ) and amarath

Another one of these huge trombone squash. this one is a metre long. I'm not kidding you.

Beets, really sweet and delicious

Pink fir potatoes.  First time growing these and they are so good in potato salad.

Strawberries. We are picking a good handful every day and most of them are not being munched by bugs.

And finally this is today's harvest:  Blackjack zucchini, green capsicum, spring onion, corn and tomatoes (black cherry, red beefsteak, Cosimo special, purple cherokee  katinka cherry and black cherry). 

Phew!  That's a lot of fruit and veg.  Even though I've not been posting we are keeping a tally, by weight, of everything we are growing this year. Ive just got to work out how to put a clever widgit thingy in the sidebar like Daphne.  And talking of Daphne if you want to see more harvest, just pop over to her place.

My creative space: two new dresses (Simplicity 2209 and 9909)

I made two new dresses during my Christmas staycation. How lovely to have the time to do some relaxed sewing, and I even felt confident to put in a zip (more on that later).

The first dress is of course, made from a sheet albeit a vintage floral one.  I was planning on making this the muslin, but I decided that I liked the fabric too much and ended up tweaking a few things so that I could wear it (serious sewists gasp in disbelief and horror.... ) The pattern is Lisette Simplicity 2209, the Passport dress. There are loads of lovely versions on Flikr and I was a bit daunted by a) making something fitted  and b) adding a zip.  Up until now I have gone down the 'it doesn't really matter if it's too big I can always wear it with a belt' route. Anyway, I took a deep breath, reminded myself that:  I have put zips into purses, the fabric is a sheet for goodness sake so it doesn't matter if you stuff it up, and got on with it.

The pattern was really clear and easy to follow. It's also got some really nice details like a cross over dart at the front. I cut out a size 12 in the bodice according to my measurements on the pattern envelope, and graded down to a 10 at the waist and hips. The bodice ended up not being a great fit - there was a big gape at the back, a small gape at the front and it was also a bit too big under the arms.  Because I didn't make a muslin (doh!) I ended making two small darts at the back which fixed up the gap, and also took in the sides a little.  It's not perfect but it fits such better now.

The pattern calls for finishing the armholes with bias tape but I didn't have any in the right colour so I made my own in the same fabric which did the job.  I didn't go a great job of matching up the back darts on the skirt with the bodice darts - but I can see how this should be done now and as I'm planning on making this again, I'll pay more attention to this part.

Finally the zip.  I didn't have a regular zip that was long enough so I attempted an invisible zip. You can't see the zip so I guess that's good, but it's not perfectly aligned at the top and there is a weird bulge at the bottom which I'm not really sure how to fix. 

But, all in all I'm really pleased with this happy, summery dress! 

front view



back view



Somewhat ambitiously I started dress two on the 30th Dec to wear to a New Year's even party.  Hmmm, no pressure there then.  Actually it wasn't to hard at all and I did get it finished in time.   The pattern is Simplicity 9909, a vintage 80's sundress pattern and I made view A without the lace front panel.  I used some quilting cotton  that I bought on sale for $4 a metre - blue with white yellow and red triangles. Like Humble Habit, I'm loving yellow and blue together at the moment.

The pattern was a 10 and the only alteration I did was to take in the sides a little bit and gather the back more by shortening the elastic because I have a very narrow back.  It did involve a little bit of hand sewing as the front band needed to be finished by hand so that the stitching doesn't show on the front, and the straps are also hand sewn. I did take some short cuts with the belt though and topstitched all round the edged instead of whip-stitching the gap closed.   It's got pockets too, which you can't see on the picture.


 I love this dress and with the twirly skirt it was perfect for new year dancing!

Flea market finds, vintage loveliness

Does it count when the flea market finds are gifts from a neighbour who used to run a vintage clothes shop?  I hope so because I've been given such a lovely collection of vintage clothes and I need an excuse to show them off.  She told me that she used to buy the clothes by the bundle, and many of them are from overseas. She also kindly lent me the dress form which has been very useful, not only for photographing clothes, but for using in my sewing efforts and it (or should a dress form always be a she?) is about the same size as me. I feel very lucky to have been given these amazing clothes - some of them need some fixing up and I'm planning some alterations on others.  I can't wait!

This is a handmade dress possible from the 50's in a pink and yellow cotton. Amazingly it fits me perfectly but  is in need of some repair so I'll need to reattach the bodice and fix the rips.   I'll  probably take off the bows at the neck and pockets too.

A 70s maxi dress. I'm not sure about whether to shorten this one or leave it as is.

A 60's shirt - no alterations needed here.

A really great chiffon dress; not sure of the era, maybe the 70's.  One sleeve was hanging by a thread so I took it off and I'm planning on taking the other one off  as well to make it sleeveless.  Then I'll need to add binding to the armholes and take in the bodice a bit.
She also gave me some red high-waisted pants from the 70's. These just about fit me, although in my post-Christmas excess state I have to breathe in :) and I love them, especially with my new shoes....
For more flea market finds, pop over to Sophies.

Harvest Monday, Jan 2

It's going to be 40C today so we went out early and watered, covered up the garden with some shade - it's now festooned with vintage sheets! - picked what we could find and hid back inside.

Here is the first ripe tomato of the season, a periforme (piriform?) and it was delicious. I ate it for lunch with some pasta, freash basil and parmesan.

Also in the harvest were some beans (purple king, blue lake and a borlotti that my Italian neighbour gave me), round zucchini, button squash and trombone zucchini.  The latter was picked at a sensible size.

This is what happens when your almost 6 year old son claims ownership of a trombone squash and wants to see how big they will grow.  It reached 89cm until the weight of the fruit made it fall off the vine.  Pretty impressive!

Last some apricots, not from our tree, but our neighbour's (but we did help pick them). I'm making the most of the hot days to start drying them - I've used the trays from the dehydrator under a fly screen with glass on top.  It seems to be working quite well!

Happy New year colour

Our sunflowers bloomed today to welcome in the New Year - what a lovely cheery sight. We've were out early watering in preparation for the hot days ahead (40C forecasted for Melbourne tomorrow- yuck!), so we'll be out in the morning rigging up some shade. 

Happy new year everyone!